UN envoy focuses on progress in unification talks

By Kerin Hope

Alexander Downer, United Nations special envoy to the latest Cyprus reunification effort, insists that after 14 months of open-ended bicommunal talks he is still “cautiously optimistic” about a settlement.

One hopeful sign, he says, is that Demetris Christofias and Mehmet Ali Talat, the Cypriot leaders, are meeting more often in order to tackle key issues such as power-sharing and property ownership in a future federal state.

After almost 50 sessions the leaders ”have made significant progress – though not equal progress in all (negotiating) chapters,” Mr Downer says. “But they’ve agreed on an enormous number of things.”

These include most issues concerning the economy and European Union responsibilities – seen as the least contentious of the six chapters – as well as a large chunk of the governance and power-sharing chapter that dominated the discussions earlier this year.

But chapters on property, territory and security – issues that brought several previous peace initiatives to a halt - have still to be discussed in depth.

The Australian former foreign minister, now a political consultant, flies in regularly to facilitate the negotiations, with UN-appointed experts providing legal and technical help.

His “good offices” mission – the venue for the talks – occupies a modest one-storey building at the former Nicosia international airport in the UN-controlled buffer zone separating the Greek and Turkish Cypriot parts of the island.

Mr Downer’s qualifications for the job include mediating a peace agreement in a civil conflict in Papua New Guinea and helping the UN organise a referendum in East Timor.

Yet the UN is deploying significantly fewer resources than during the ill-fated peace effort of 2002-04 that resulted in the “Annan plan” – a 10,000-page blueprint covering almost every detail of establishing a loose federation on Cyprus that only a handful of islanders claim to have read.

That plan was dropped after 76 per cent of Greek Cypriots who voted rejected it in a referendum - although it was approved by 65 per cent of Turkish Cypriots in a separate vote.

This time the UN does not intend to impose deadlines, Mr Downer stresses, in spite of Mr Talat’s concerns about reaching a deal before his presidential term runs out in the spring.

“There’s no timeframe, it’s up to the leaders to work out the timelines and agree on them,” he says. “The Turkish Cypriots want to complete the negotiations by early next year and the Greek Cypriots don’t want to be suffocated by asphyxiating deadlines.”

Mr Christofias and Mr Talat - fellow leftwingers and self-described friends – start their twice-weekly sessions with frank private discussions before sitting down with their advisers and UN experts, according to Cyprus-based officials.

Yet hopes that two veteran Cypriot politicians committed to healing the island’s 35-year division would be able to achieve a breakthrough have so far not been realised.

Mr Downer points to a recent agreement on setting up a rotating federal presidency as a sign of “real progress” though details of voting procedures have still to be worked out.

Moreover, the two leaders have started to discuss the complex property issue which will also have an impact on opportunities for Greek and Turkish Cypriots to return to homes they abandoned in the 1974 conflict.

After 35 years of division, many Greek Cypriots would prefer to receive compensation or sell their holdings in the Turkish Cypriot north of the island rather than live there after a settlement.

“It’s a complicated issue, legally and economically,” Mr Downer says. “For example, if compensation is going to be a big part of the solution, where does the money come from? You have to work out ways of financing it.”

An agreement on property would also help resolve the issue of how much the territory in north Cyprus would be handed back to the Greek Cypriots in a settlement, he says.

A few issues on security have been agreed, for example that a reunified Cyprus would not have an army, Mr Downer says.

But the continued presence of Turkish and Greek military forces on the island under current treaties of alliance, and the Turkish Cypriot position that a treaty of guarantee is still essential although Cyprus is a member of the European Union, are potential stumbling blocks to a deal.

Both Cypriot leaders have recently sounded considerably less upbeat than Mr Downer about the course of negotiations so far.

Mr Christofias said in Brussels in October that his expectations for the talks “had not been justified” and blamed Turkey’s political and military leadership for the lack of progress.

Mr Talat said in a Financial Times interview in September that overall he was “not satisfied with the pace of the talks” and that the current initiative is the “last chance” of resolving the Cyprus problem.

Yet making pessimistic public statements is also part of the negotiating process, Mr Downer suggests.

“When you go and talk to the two sides, it all depends what mood they’re in,” Mr Downer “They’ll run a different line on different days. We run one line - that this process can succeed. ”